Fiverr, the online freelance gig marketplace, is planning a major downsizing of its staff as the company pivots to AI, the company’s CEO announced in a jargon-filled letter to employees. <\/p>\n
As reported by the Wall Street Journal<\/a>, the layoffs will eliminate about 30 percent of the Fiverr workforce.<\/p>\n \u201cThe resizing and refocusing effort will allow Fiverr to go after growth opportunities as a leaner organization with an AI-native infrastructure and mindset,” Fiverr wrote on its investor relations page.<\/p>\n Fiverr first launched in 2010 as an online gig marketplace where writers, musicians, visual artists, and other freelancers could offer their services for just $5. Soon after, Fiverr expanded its offerings, allowing freelancers to provide multiple tiers of services and charge more than $5 for their gigs.<\/p>\n In the Sept. 15 letter to employees<\/a>, Fiverr CEO Micha Kaufman also said that the changes needed to become an \u201cAI-first company\u201d will be \u201cpainful\u201d:<\/p>\n \n Mashable Light Speed\n <\/p>\n Today, we are launching such a transformation for Fiverr, to turn Fiverr into an AI-first company that’s leaner, faster, with a modern AI-focused tech infrastructure, a smaller team, each with substantially greater productivity, and far fewer management layers.\u00a0<\/p>\n This transformation requires a painful reset, and as we make it, we will be parting ways with approximately 250 team members across the different departments, resulting in a smaller and flatter organization. This is possibly one of the toughest decisions that I have had to make, especially as Fiverr is such a magical place with a strong sense of belonging and mission-driven culture.<\/p>\n Recently, Fiverr has begun promoting AI use among its freelancer community. Earlier this year, for example, Fiverr announced<\/a> a new program called Fiverr Go, which allowed its gig workers to train AI on their own work in order to automate their creations with AI. The company promoted<\/a> this new AI service through a series of ads featuring character actor Brett Gelman, best known for his role on Stranger Things.<\/p>\n In a company-wide email from May of this year, Kaufman bluntly warned his staff about the company’s pivot to AI.<\/p>\n \u201cAI is coming for your jobs,” Kaufman wrote<\/a> to his employees. “Heck, it\u2019s coming for my job too. This is a wake-up call.\u201d<\/p>\n In recent years, Fiverr’s community of freelancers has criticized the growth of users on the platform who are fulfilling gigs with generative AI.<\/p>\n “Is AI destroying the REAL creators?” asked<\/a> one freelancer on Fiverr’s community forums last year after noting their business on the site had been down.<\/p>\n Fiverr appeared to downplay concerns about AI in an ad it released in October 2024. The ad features a cheery musical number called “Nobody Cares<\/a>,” referring to Fiverr’s claim that nobody cares if a freelance artist or creator uses AI.\u00a0<\/p>\n Now, in the pursuit of AI, Fiverr will lay off 250 of its employees.<\/p>\n